night sky eyed
by fittedhatsandacaralarm
Summary: Teddy decides he does in fact love the little girl, who has already stolen his heart without even realizing it. - teddydominique. nextgen.


_one. this innocence is brilliant_

It's her fourth birthday and they're at the Burrow, a big happy family. Audrey hasn't left yet, Angelina hasn't committed suicide yet, and Percy hasn't gone mad with longing for a wife who never loved him and a girl who's long gone—yet. They will all happen eventually, but for now they're just the Weasleys and maybe they can pretend they're happy for at least a little while.

It's wrong, really. He's nearly eleven and she's only four, but Godric, he might just love her already, with her father's hair and her uncle's eyes (because Bill's sky blue eyes never would have fit on her face, it was always Charlie's inky midnight blue shade) and her mother's nose. She's so different from her sister, the ice queen, all blonde hair and grey eyes and talltalltall and slimslimslim. And he's supposed to end up with the ice queen, it's almost written in the stars, except it's not, because Teddy doesn't like almost-eight-year-old Victoire, he likes her baby sister (and it's wrongwrongwrong, except it's not, because Grandma 'Dromeda says that love is never wrong).

They're all gathered by the roaring, blazing, burning, crackling fire now because it's the middle of January and who wants to be out in the blizzard wreaking havoc on the world, nearly swallowing them all up in it's icy rage? The blizzard is like Victoire, he muses as his skinny frame sinks into the holey, soft armchair with a leg missing that's been in the Burrow since before even Grandpa Arthur was born. And the fire, the fire is like Dominique's hair, except it's not, because Dominique isn't fire, she's not fiery and hot-tempered and impulsive like her cousin Mollythesecond, she's cool and serene and soothing and almost like…almost like water, he decides as he watches her chubby little fingers claw at the dragons flying across the wrapping of Uncle Charlie's gift for her. He watches her nightskyeyes gleam in delight as the little toy Hungarian Horntail flies around the room, suspended by magic she can't even begin to understand yet. And he doesn't see the smirking glance exchanged by Uncle Harry and Uncle Charlie because Teddy decides he does in fact love the little girl, who has already stolen his heart without even realizing it.

_two. i tell myself i can handle it_

And so the Lupin boy, surrounded by Weasleys and Potters (but nevernevernever Lupins), watches the little Weasley toddler grow and grow and grow until she's something almost unrecognizable. She's not a little girl anymore, and then suddenly she's off to Hogwarts.

Funny, he thinks, that his last year at Hogwarts is the year just before her first. It may have been considered slightly creepy of him to immediately beg McGonagall for a teaching job, but Godric, he couldn't live with her so far away in Scotland and him in America for Auror training. So, he gave up his dream and became the one thing he promised he'd never be: a frumpy old Defence Against The Dark Arts professor.

He announces it with Victoire hungrily latched onto his arm at Lily's eighth birthday party, also located at the Burrow, which conveniently doubled as a going-away party for Victoire and Molly and Roxie and Charli Longbottom and Lorcan Scamander and Brian Longbottom and James and Freddie, who were all off to Hogwarts this year. Victoire had been attaching herself to him much too much lately, and he was beginning to think it may send Dominique the wrong message, but it didn't matter, because it was always supposed to be TeddyandVictoire, never TeddyandDominique (except itdiditdiditdid matter, because damn it, he _loved _her!), so he pretended that he was madly in love with Victoire, with those dull kisses in her bedroom at night as she hurriedly pressed for something more, some kind of signal that he loved her.

"I'm going to be working at Hogwarts this year, as your Defence teacher," he said loudly, nodding towards the Hogwarts students. They all broke into grins, except his little girl, who looked away, nearly ashamedly.

"And we're together!" Victoire said suddenly before covering his lips with hers in a frenzied, dull kiss, and he thought that this couldn't be anything like kissing the (his) nightskyeyed little girl who was currently hiding tears behind her firecurls.

_three. she always belonged to someone else_

He stays with Victoire, stays with his job, stays in his dingy little flat that is much too small for him and Victoire and all of Victoire's expensive and much too gaudy things. He stays and stays and stays, but Dominique moves and moves and moves.

Her skirts get shorter and her hair gets straighter and her eye makeup gets darker and her lips get redder and her clothes get lesser and her heels get higher, and by her third year, he wonders whatever happened to the (hishis_his) _little Ravenclaw girl.

But he breaks, eventually. He snaps and shatters and he's torn to pieces when he comes into his office after dinner one balmy early-June night and finds her snogging that horrible, horrible Lorcan Scamander, who also happens to be Roxie's boyfriend, and he can't believe he ever spoke to that piece of scum, but his heart is completely obliterated when she looks up at him with those wide nightskyeyes, gasping for breath with her cheeks flushed the color of her hair and her top is unbuttoned and Oh, Godric, he can't even breathe and he has to move, he can't staystaystay anymore.

"Whore," he spits at her before striding out of his office. His eyes are bright red (the color of ), and he's so furious at his (the) little girl whose stars have faded from her eyes (but the truth is, he's not angry at her, he just wishesprayshopes that he could have been the boy she was snogging senseless).

He walks and walks and walks until he's gotten to the Forbidden Forest, and then he just runs. He runs until he can't run anymore, then he Apparates to St. Mungos and proposes to Victoire in the middle of the Maternity Ward without a ring, because he never did anything right, anyways, because he was the lonely Lupin boy lost in a sea of fire hair and Weasleys and Potters and war heroes.

_four. i know your heart is shutshutshut_

They're married on their anniversary, August 30th, under the willow tree by the Black Lake at Hogwarts. She's stunning and perfect and her blood red dress hugs her hips and the neckline plunges a little too low for a little fourteen year old and her matching red hair is curly again, like when she was little, and her nightskyeyes are finally shining again and he can't breathe and he think he might keel over dead right there at the altar because she's so breathtakingly gorgeous (and nevernevernever his).

And then Victoire, bland in comparison to her maid-of-honor little sister, steps onto the aisle, and he can't even look at her, with her poofy ivory-white princess dress and red rose bouquet and her silvery blonde hair all done up in a overly perfect bun and her grey eyes cold and calculating. He can't even glance in her direction.

Bill doesn't cry when he gives her away, because he knows it's not forever.

Teddy cries when he says, "I do," because he's breaking his own heart, and maybe he's breaking little Dominique who isn't so little anymore's heart, too, but he doesn't think about that because at the reception she's flying across the dance floor, attached to Lorcan and she's smiling and laughing and she's happy and it's been so long since he saw the little girl he fell in love with come out in her, because lately it's just been smoky eyes and blood red lips and firewhiskey and late-night rendezvous with Slytherin boys in the broom cupboards and her trusty Marlboros and stumbling home in ripped fishnets, because she's like a broken china doll, except she's not because what he doesn't know is that she's made herself hard, unbreakable, because she's watched (her) Teddy fall in sort-of love with her sister, except he hasn't, not really, has he?

_five. beauty queen of only eighteen_

Suddenly, it's December and she's nearly eighteen and he'll be turning twenty-five in April and baby Remus William will be three in June and Victoire is already pregnant again with a girl due in February and where, oh, where did the time go, he wonders? It's funny, they're all old now, but nothing's changed. James still teases Albus relentlessly about being a Slytherin. Louis and Lysander are still best friends. Rose and Scorpius are still breaking up and getting back together weekly. And Lorcan and (his) Dominique have just announced their engagement.

He drowns himself in firewhiskey, enjoying the burn that slides down his throat, the night that they announce it, at Lorcan's birthday party, and by the end of the coldcoldfreezing night, he can't even remember his own name, he's so drunk. It seems that all of these life-changing announcements happen at birthday parties. It seems like all of Teddy's memories are at fucking birthday parties, when there's really nothing to celebrate anymore, because it's _Lorcan's _ ring that's on (his) Dominique's finger, not Teddy's.

Dominique tells Victoire she's pregnant in January, that the baby is due in July, that they're naming it Victor Theodore if it's a boy and Victoria Theresa if it's a girl, and that she and Teddy will definitely be the godparents. They marry a month later in a small ceremony at the burrow with only the Weasley-Potter-Scamander-Malfoy-Longbottom clan in attendance. When baby Tori is born on Uncle Harry's birthday, she has her mother's nightskyeyes, and he can't even look at the little girl who's her mother (but at the same time isn't, because his Dominique doesn't have white-blonde hair or Luna Lovegood's nose or Rolf Scamander's lips, does she?)

_six. have you heard the news that you're dead?_

It's funny how things always end up connected, how even though they might be polarly opposite things, they're always together, in a strange sort of way.

Take the month of February of 2029.

Teddy Lupin, who isn't even thirty-one yet, dies on the third. According to the Wizarding population (not to mention now-haggardly fifty-eight-year-old Rita Skeeter), he was in a horribly unusual accident at work involving poisoned firewhiskey that he'd been drinking in celebration of his wife's newly announced third pregnancy. In truth? It was suicide involving too many bottles to count and a bit of deadly poison from Professor Potter's stock. Oh, how little Lily regrets allowing Teddy full access to the Potions room.

Eight days later, twenty-four-year-old Dominique Weasley abandons her husband of six years and her two little children to live in Japan. She's found dead in Tokyo three weeks afterwards. She had been flattened on the pavement by a truck when crossing the bustling street, and the lights went out of her nightskyeyes forever.

**[a/n;] **Wow. So, um, this wasn't the way I originally intended to make it end, but it sort of just came to me, and I couldn't stop writing this ending, and when it was written, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it, because I actually sort of like it. But TeddyDominique is definitely one of my favorite pairings. OTP, anyone? :3 This is my first HP fic that isn't a freeverse, and I semi-like it. **I don't own anything you recognize, okay?** Don't favorite without reviewing! –R.


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